Springtime by Andrew Hitchen

A Mother's day card I designed. The trees and the sunlight were painted with coloured inks and watercolours. The rays of sunlight were soft yellow and green pastels smudged across the drawing. This was then manilpulated in Photoshop.

My Mum absolutely loved this! She often complains that the bulk of my artwork is quite dark and sinister, so I made an effort and produced something quite pretty for a change.

This was heavily influenced by Claude Monet's 'Le Jardin A Giverny', a print of which I keep on my bedroom wall.

Strawberry Fields Illustration by Andrew Hitchen

Getting to grips with digital techniques.

I'm not a huge fan of digital art, but using Photoshop certainly has its uses. This is a rehash of a piece of artwork I completed last year. The psychedelic sky was a section of an abstract piece called Do We Dream In Colour? The texture you can see is actually the texture of the paper I used. The strawberry-coloured hills were made with non-waterproof ink with crystals of rocky salt sprinkled on top, a nifty little technique I learned from Ian Barraclough at the LCC .

The Dream Catcher

The Dream Catcher, a bizarre and rather mysterious character from a novel I am currently working on. Media: pen and ink, soft pastels, crystals of salt, collage and some digital enhancement.